Biographical Memoir Carl H. Eigenmann Leonhard

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOLUME XVIII—THIRTEENTH MEMOIR BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF CARL H. EIGENMANN 1863-1927 BY LEONHARD STEJNEGER PRESENTED TO THE ACADEMY AT THE ANNUAL MEETING, 1937 CARL H. EIGENMANN * 1863-1927 BY LEON HARD STEJNEGER Carl H. Eigenmann was born on March 9, 1863, in Flehingen, a small village near Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany, the son of Philip and Margaretha (Lieb) Eigenmann. Little is known of his ancestry, but both his physical and his mental character- istics, as we know them, proclaim him a true son of his Suabian fatherland. When fourteen years old he came to Rockport, southern Indiana, with an immigrant uncle and worked his way upward through the local school. He must have applied himself diligently to the English language and the elementary disciplines as taught in those days, for two years after his arrival in America we find him entering the University of Indiana, bent on studying law. At the time of his entrance the traditional course with Latin and Greek still dominated, but in his second year in college it was modified, allowing sophomores to choose between Latin and biology for a year's work. It is significant that the year of Eigenmann's entrance was also that of Dr. David Starr Jordan's appointment as professor of natural history. The latter had already established an enviable reputa- tion as an ichthyologist, and had brought with him from Butler University several enthusiastic students, among them Charles H. Gilbert who, although only twenty years of age, was asso- ciated with him in preparing the manuscript for the "Synopsis of North American Fishes," later published as Bulletin 19 of the United States National Museum. Eigenmann's teacher in the classic curriculum is said to have been "uninspiring" so it is small wonder that when the choice came to his students, the best ones took advantage of the opportunity to follow the new trend, and as Jordan tells us "the leader of these, Carl H. Eigen- mann, found in Zoology the passion of his life." Realizing that * According to Dictionary of American Biography, "Eigenmann's middle initial did not stand for a name." 3OS NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOL. XVIII "his work was of the highest order" Jordan later made him in- structor in his department. This was a period of great activity in American vertebrate systematic taxonomy and faunistic studies, which has rightly been called the Bairdian Period, beginning with the reports on the zoological collections of the Pacific Railroad Surveys and the Mexican Boundary Commission, with headquarters at the Smithsonian Institution under Spencer Fullerton Baird. At that time there was gathered in Washington a circle of specialists such as Gill, Tarleton Bean, Brown-Goode, Ridgway, Dall, True, Coues and others with whom Jordan was in close cooper- ation. The zoology of these men and zoology as it was taught at the Indiana University at that time, is now referred to as taxonomy and zoogeography. Jordan defined taxonomy as "technical classification of organisms—an attempt to express as well as possible by different categories (order, family, genus, species) the lines of descent and ramification through which animals and plants have acquired their present forms. A classification truly natural—that is, based on structure, embryological development, geological history, and genetic descent—is a transcript of our actual knowledge of the evolution of the forms in question. From this point of view, taxonomy is the perfected product of all Natural History research." Jordan's method was to take up one of these categories, the species of a genus, or the genera of a family, for study with the student and embody the results in a paper under their joint authorship, or to turn the material over to the student to be worked up alone or jointly with another student. Thus in taking up the study of the darters with a view to ascertaining their relationship to the true perches, he had Eigenmann prepare skeletons of 20 species of the subfamily Etheostomatinae. The result of their studies was embodied in a joint paper concluded in March 1885 and published in the Proceedings of the National Museum, Eigenmann's first publi- cation the year before he received his bachelor's degree. Now followed in quick succession numerous papers by the young ichthyologists. In 1885 they submitted no less than fourteen 306 CARL H. EIGENMANN STEJNEGER papers to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and Jordan, either alone or jointly with Eigenmann, Gilbert, Meek, or Hughes, submitted to the United States National Museum fourteen papers on fishes. Among Eigenmann's papers of that year may be mentioned his first "Review" paper, in con- junction with Morton W. Fordice, giving full "synonymy of the genera and species of the Eleotridinae found in the waters of America with analytical keys by which they may be distin- guished," based on specimens belonging to the University of Indiana mostly collected by Professor Jordan. Before the end of the year Eigenmann finished another sim- ilar paper on the Diodontidae, Porcupine-fishes, which was published the following year over his own name only. In this early paper the 23-year old ichthyologist demonstrated the painstaking, careful, deliberate qualities which distinguish all his later work. The object of the investigation was "to ascer- tain the number and valid species and their correct nomencla- ture" the main problem before him being the question of the distinctness of the two Linnean species Diodon hystrix and holocanthus. Point for point he analyzed the literature, quoting it verbatim; point for point he examined the whole series of specimens by number and origin, so that his statement can be verified and used by future investigators. He found gaps and uncertainties both in the literature and in the material, yet although he had become fairly convinced that the two forms were identical, he was satisfied with leaving them separate for the time being. No hasty judgment, no juvenile self-assertion, no dogmatic insistence on his own view! It is interesting to note that he acknowledged himself "indebted to Miss Rosa Smith for the description of two specimens from La Paz, at San Diego." An interesting side of Eigenmann's mental activity at this time is revealed in a little sketch entitled "Folk-lore of a German Village" in The Current of May 1, 1886, a Chicago weekly, in which he not only tells a charming story of the reported origin of the names of his own native village and of the neighboring Sickingen, but through some Suabian folklore about death and 307 NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOL. XVIII Faust is led into a discussion of the latter, revealing considerable familiarity with the literature. Eigenmann received his bachelor's degree in 1886. In the fall, Dr. Myers tells us, an opportunity for the principalship of a school in Santa Paula, California, came to him through his classmate, Barton W. Evermann. He arrived too late for the position but remained for a while in the state. In San Diego he met Miss Rosa Smith, who was already becoming known. as a competent ichthyologist by her papers on west coast fishes. They were married in that city on August 20, 1887, and thus was started under joint authorship that series of ichthyological papers which soon made the "Eigenmann and Eigenmann" au- thority familiarly known on two continents. The opportunity had come for the newlyweds to attend Harvard University and under Alexander Agassiz, Garman and Mark to study the large collections of fishes gathered by Louis Agassiz and his assistants during the Thayer Expedition in Brazil, and by Alexander Agassiz and Dr. Steindachner during the Hassler Expedition around South America. Having received his master's degree at Bloomington, Eigenmann and his wife were soon at work at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Massachu- setts, and with short intervals there appeared a series of impor- tant papers along two distinct lines, some on embryological and evolutionary subjects, others on faunistic or purely taxonomic questions, too numerous to be specified here, but the appearance of their first report on the South American fishes, the precursor of the many later publications which were the crowning success of Eigenmann's life work, shall be mentioned. The "Preliminary Notes on South American Nematognathi" or Catfishes, was issued as early as July 18, 1888, an impressive paper of 52 pages treating of 296 species, 36 of which were described as new, belonging in 61 genera and 5 families. Prac- tically simultaneously there appeared in the American Naturalist an article giving a key to the families and showing that the enclosure of the airbladder in a bony capsule in the American Nematognathi is the rule rather than the exception. There can be no doubt that the year spent at Harvard, with a brief summer 308 CARL H. EIGENMANN STEJNEGER course at Woods Hole was of the utmost importance in molding Eigenmann's scientific individuality. While greatly taken up with taxonomic studies of the South American fish fauna, he was assiduously pursuing those other zoological disciplines which were to become his main working field for the next ten years. By the middle of December 1888 the Eigenmanns were back in San Diego, where as curator of the local Natural History Society he was instrumental in establishing the San Diego Biological Laboratory. The fishes of the coast became the im- mediate objects of Eigenmann's investigations but not merely from the purely systematic standpoint. The study of variation was one of the principal lines of research laid out in establishing the station, but the life histories, development and evolution of the San Diego fishes were receiving equal attention, as demonstrated in the paper entitled "Fishes of San Diego" published by the United States National Museum in 1892.

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